Balance of power may be shifting

If the Boston Celtics acquire Kevin Garnett today, the NBA's East gets a bit closer to the West.

July 31, 2007|By Tania Ganguli, Sentinel Staff Writer

This all started when ping-pong balls sent the NBA draft's first two picks to the Western Conference.

On that day in May, the verdict was clear.

The struggling Eastern Conference's most troubled teams weren't going to have franchise-building players handed to them. They were going to have to work for them.

Today the Boston Celtics and Minnesota Timberwolves are reportedly putting the finishing touches on a trade that will bring Timberwolves star Kevin Garnett into the Eastern Conference in exchange for, among others, big man Al Jefferson. The move will make Garnett the biggest of five notables pulled from the West into what was the lower part of last season's Eastern Conference.

Each team's hope is that they won't be at the bottom of this year's Eastern Conference. They all felt they were just a few moves away from getting to the top.

"If you saw the playoffs last year, every team that was not in the playoffs and even some that were there said, `It could have been us instead of Cleveland,' " Orlando Magic General Manager Otis Smith said.

The changes started on draft day when the New York Knicks, Charlotte Bobcats and Celtics -- which had three of the five worst records in the Eastern Conference last season -- made their first moves.

The Knicks traded for Portland's Zach Randolph, who took his troubled past and productive offense to New York. The Bobcats grabbed Golden State's Jason Richardson, who averaged 19 points and helped the Warriors upset top seed Dallas.

The Celtics, who finished last season with the second-worst record in the NBA, started making changes then, too. Boston traded for Seattle shooting guard Ray Allen, 32, a seven-time all-star. The Magic followed a month later. Earlier this month, Orlando picked up free agent Rashard Lewis, previously with Seattle, to put a scorer next to big man Dwight Howard.

"For years the talent was going West," Orlando Coach Stan Van Gundy told the Sentinel last week. "But it has moved the other way this summer. I don't think you can say the East from top to bottom is better than the West, but it certainly has improved more than the West has this summer.''

Whether or not these moves will change the balance of power, Smith wasn't sure.

Randolph, Allen, and Lewis came from teams that didn't make the playoffs last season. Garnett will, too. Richardson came from the last Western team to qualify.

"I think the West is still pretty strong -- you got San Antonio, Phoenix, the Lakers," Smith said. "The talent that came from the West came from teams that weren't at the top."

The NBA often experiences shifts in franchise power -- and they often coincide with No. 1 draft picks. When the Spurs drafted Tim Duncan, so began a new era in San Antonio. Shaquille O'Neal did it, for a time, in Orlando. Hakeem Olajuwon eventually won Houston titles.

But the Celtics, Bobcats, Knicks and Magic didn't have that option this season. Instead they raided the Western Conference in hopes of shifting the power back East.